VMWare Fusion Beta

VMWare sent an email out for a private beta testing of Fusion, their upcoming virtualization product for Mac OS X.

Dear Beta Customer,

We are pleased to announce Fusion Friends and Family release. Fusion is the code name for the new VMware desktop product for Mac. You are part of a select group of users with the opportunity to experience this new and exciting product first hand.

TUAW posts details from the private beta site. Notable features listed include:

Ability to create and run a wide variety of x86 operating systems on OS X without rebooting.
Access physical devices from the virtual machine. You can access physical devices such as CD ROM drives, video cameras, iPods, printers and high-speed disks from the virtual machine.
Leverage Virtual SMP capabilities to gain additional performance improvement. You can assign more than a single CPU (on supported hardware with Intel Core Duo CPU) to gain additional performance for CPU-intensive workloads.
Run over 300 virtual appliances: You can download any of the over 300 virtual appliances - preinstalled and preconfigured applications packaged with an operating system in a virtual machine - available from VMware's Technology Network. Setting up a wiki or blog server has never been easier.
Fusion supports all Intel Mac hardware, including the new 64-bit Mac Pro and iMac.

A screenshot of the beta VMWare Fusion application can be seen here. A beta signup form appears available, but the response is not immediate.
VMWare Fusion requires an Intel Mac and will not run on PowerPC Macs.